August 02, 2015

Shortly after Democrat Annette Taddeo launched her campaign against Miami Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, Curbelo boasted he had snagged the endorsements of a slew of local Democrats. The list included Hispanic media consultant Freddy Balsera, who also happens to be raising money for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

That didn't seem to sit well with Taddeo's campaign: Someone in her circle asked the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington to make Clinton's campaign aware of Balsera's endorsement -- in what Balsera considers an attempt to sideline him from the high-profile 2016 presidential race.

The behind-the-scenes fight spilled over into the public realm last week when Balsera's firm organized a series of meetings in Miami for Lorella Praeli, Clinton's Hispanic outreach director, who was in town to introduce herself to local reporters and Democratic activists. The feud was first reported Sunday by Politico.

Balsera doesn't have an official role with the Clinton campaign -- at least, not yet -- but he's a Clinton supporter and surrogate speaker who worked on President Barack Obama's two races and sat on his national finance committees.

"The Taddeo campaign heard that Balsera may be doing some work with the Clinton campaign and -- this was months ago -- and asked the DCCC to raise the issue with the Clinton campaign," DCCC spokesman Matt Thornton told the Miami Herald.

And it wasn’t just donors in the Magic City who dug deep. The “super” political action committees enlisted to do heavy fundraising for Rubio and Bush hauled in more money from Florida than anywhere else, underscoring the pitched battle between the two Republicans to win their home state.

Norman Braman, the Miami auto magnate and civic activist, made good on his promise to stand behind Rubio, whom he called the “candidate of the future.” Braman gave the Conservative Solutions committee backing Rubio a tidy $5 million, according to a financial report the group filed Friday.

“I believe he’s the only Republican who can beat Hillary Clinton,” said Braman, who is said to be willing to give Rubio $10 million. “All the others have been there. I don’t believe in dynasties. I don’t believe in crowning nominees.”

His money— in three checks of $1.5 million, $1.5 million and $2 million in April, May and June — topped the list of contributors to the committee and amounted to nearly a third of the group’s $16.1 million total. About $11.4 million of that came from Florida.

The biggest donor to the Right to Rise USA committee supporting Bush was also a local: Coral Gables healthcare mogul Mike Fernandez, a longtime Bush friend who hosted a March fundraising soiree, contributed $3 million. Right to Rise raised a whopping $103 million in support of Bush’s presidential bid, with Florida donations comprising about $29 million.

You've got questions: How much have Miami's two Republican presidential candidates raised so far? Who did it come from? How much did top donors give?

We've got answers.

Check out our interactive graphic, where you can peruse the top national, Florida and South Florida donors to the super PACs backing Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. We've also got a county-by-county breakdown of how much they hauled for their campaigns in Florida.

July 31, 2015

For one day, Miami City Hall gets a pass for ignoring your emails and phone calls.

An electrical surge Friday morning at Miami’s police headquarters knocked out power to the building and shut down computer systems for the department and the municipal administration, according to city officials.

Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes said the power spike happened after midnight, and 400 NW Second Ave. went dark. Computers in the building went down. Police officers were still able to use their laptops, and 911 calls went to a backup center at the Coconut Grove firefighter training facility, he said.

The city administration keeps its servers at the police department and lost its connection as well. The public couldn't access documents and city employees couldn't accept calls at their office or emails to their city addresses.

City Manager Daniel Alfonso texted that the city was getting by “with difficulty.”

Llanes said the department was getting back online around 5 p.m., but emails and the city’s website were still down as of this posting.

Saying “America’s approach to Cuba is at a crossroads,” Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton called for an end to the 53-year-old Cuban trade embargo in Miami on Friday.

The former secretary of state’s chosen location of Florida International University was significant for two reasons: Clinton delivered the message in the heart of the Cuban exile community, which is divided over the issue, and did it at a college campus, where the crowd tilted younger and, according to polls, more likely to support lifting the controversial measure.

Her position would have elicited public outcry in the Miami of a not-so-distant past. But times have changed: Protests against Clinton were contained to a handful of people, many of them with the local Republican Party, outside the auditorium.

In her remarks, Clinton said her campaign is about bringing prosperity to the U.S. — but also to the citizens of Cuba, and “for the young entrepreneur in Little Havana, who dreams of expanding to old Havana.”

Though only Congress can lift the embargo, Clinton promised, if elected, to act on Cuba even if Congress doesn’t, by using her executive authority to loosen travel and other economic restrictions, including on telecommunications.

Forget the primary. For a moment Friday in Fort Lauderdale, it seemed as though next year’s general election had already arrived.

Democrat Hillary Clinton took direct aim at Republican Jeb Bush — who in turn made a pitch to the voters whose support he would need to defeat Clinton.

Clinton didn’t name Bush when she spoke to the annual conference of the National Urban League, a civil-rights organization that welcomed five 2016 presidential candidates. But she referred to the “right to rise” — the name of a political action committee raising money for him.

“Too often we see a mismatch between what some candidates say in venues like this, and what they actually do when they’re elected,” Clinton said.

“I don’t think you can credibly say that everyone has a ‘right to rise’ and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare or for repealing Obamacare. People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care. They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education. And you cannot seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote.”

That last line, alluding to some of Bush’s policies as Florida governor, prompted a round of enthusiastic applause. Bush’s administration purged the voter rolls and shortened early-voting hours, two measures that disproportionately hurt African Americans.

“What people say matters, but what they do matters more,” Clinton said.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott is using new infection control data released this week by a consumer magazine to provide further justification of his call to create a commission to review the state’s hospital system.

“The news that three Florida hospitals are the worst in America for preventing infections is troubling and unacceptable,” Scott said in a statement to the media. “The study also further demonstrates the importance of the work being conducted by the Commission on Healthcare and Hospital Funding to shine a light on the services provided at these facilities.”

Five of the presidential candidates addressed the National Urban League conference on Friday morning, speaking to a packed crowd who were eager to hear how they would address issues like criminal justice reform and closing gaps in health care and education.

Many of the attendees said they wanted to hear directly from candidates -- and they were still unsure of who they might vote for with the election more than a year away.

"I'm just listening to them all and trying to come up with my opinion. I'm very open at this point," said Jadira Hoptry, who works in financial services and came out to the conference from Fort Myers.

The attendees said over and over that racial and economic disparity issues were one their top issues that they hoped candidates would address.

"We have a crisis in our country that should have been solved at least 50 years ago, which is inequality," said Coreen Norville, 57, of Pembroke Pines. "It's not only in our schools, in banking and in the penal system. In every genre of our society, there is inequality."

She supports Hillary Clinton right now, and liked her speech but said for her it's more about the candidates proving their intentions behind their actions. "I've been around a long time -- I've seen that show before," she said. "I've taken that medicine before, and right now it's extremely bitter for me.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush is courting Hispanic voters to build momentum for his presidential run, pointing out that he relied upon the demographic during his gubernatorial campaign.

"In my re-election in 2002, I won the majority," he told Telemundo’s José Díaz-Balart in Spanish during a July 27 interview. "I won more Hispanic votes than Anglo votes, 60 percent in the state. It can be done."

Bush has some advantages over most of his GOP rivals when it comes to Hispanic voters: He speaks Spanish fluently and his wife, Columba, is a native of Mexico. But did he really win re-election as governor with 60 percent of the Hispanic vote, higher than his percentage with white voters? We decided to revisit the polls and find out.

The outside political action committee supporting U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio in his presidential campaign raised $16.1 million in the first half of the year, with four big donors making up the bulk of that, according to just-filed campaign finance records.

The filing with the Federal Election Commission covered contributions that came in during the first half of the year to Conservative Solutions PAC, a political organization formed to support Rubio’s campaign for president.

The current filing shows three donations -- $1.5 million, $1.5 million, $2 million – with one each in April, May and June.

Lawrence J. Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer for tech giant Oracle, gave $3 million in two donations, in May and in June. Ellison was recently listed No. 3 on the Forbes 400 magazine list of the richest people in American.

Coral Gables healthcare mogul Mike Fernandez topped the list of major donors to a super PAC backing former Gov. Jeb Bush, with a $3 million contribution.

Nearly two dozen donors gave at least $1 million to Right to Rise USA, which accepts unlimited donations and reported in a filing Friday that it raised more than $103 million in support of Bush’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

In addition to the Cuban-American Fernandez, the major donors include Rooney Holdings, Inc., of Tulsa, Okla., which gave $2 million.

California investor William E. Oberndorf, a board member of Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, contributed $1.5 million.

American Pacific International Capital, Inc. contributed $1.3 million and North Palm Beach-based Nextera Energy, Inc. gave $1 million.

Other million dollar donors included Republican mega-financier Al Hoffman, the founder and former chairman of WCI Communities Inc.; hedge fund billionaire Louis M. Bacon; Raul Rodriguez, president of Miami-based Clinical Medical Services, Inc.; and Hushang Ansary, a former Iranian ambassador to the United States whose wife, Shahla Ansary, also gave $1 million.

The numbers demonstrate the former Florida governor’s extensive network in Florida, with Right to Rise raising about $29 million in the state — the most of any state. Bush’s family roots in Texas also show, with $17 million raised from the state.

Jeb Bush refused the engage in cross-fire with Hillary Clinton when he took the stage Friday as the fifth and final 2016 presidential candidate to address the National Urban League in Fort Lauderdale. Clinton had alluded to Bush in her earlier remarks, but Bush stuck to his script -- which included praising each of the contenders who preceded him by name for showing up. (His campaign did respond to Clinton on his behalf.)

Bush was interrupted several times by mild applause, and a few people stood up at the end, but the only candidates to receive full ovations were Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

DIDN'T GET THE 'JEB!'-NOT-BUSH MEMO: National Urban League President Marc Morial introduced Bush as someone "from a family that is no stranger," who is "looking to win the trifecta."

HE'S GOT JOKES: "I'm pleased to see the other candidates here as well –- Secretary Clinton, Governor O'Malley, Senator Sanders and a good man who's bringing a lot of wisdom to the Republican side, Dr. Ben Carson," Bush said. "By the way, I am very glad he will likely make it into the top 10 for next week's debate. Before that thing's over we might just need a doctor. Just sayin'."

LEARNED HIS LESSON: Bush didn't mention his infamous 1994 remark when he was asked at a debate for governor what he would do for African Americans. "Probably nothing," he said at the time. But he nevertheless alluded to the moment on Friday, noting his loss in that race.

"I went through a period of what some might call 'self-reflection' but I referred to it as 'listening and learning," Bush said. "I converted to my wife's Catholic faith. I went to family courthouses where there were cases of children abused or neglected. And parents trying but unable to meet their obligations because of barriers -– language, skills, or otherwise -– that held them back."

HAT TIP: Bush praised the Democrat sitting in the White House, an unusual move for a GOP presidential candidate that earned him applause: "When President Obama says that 'for too long we've been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present,' he is speaking the truth."

APPLAUSE LINE: "We should not be wasting times agonizing over the easy calls," Bush said. For example? "Fourteen years ago, when the question was whether to keep the Confederate flag on the grounds of the Florida State Capitol, I said no, and put it in a museum where it belongs."

'RESTORATIVE' JUSTICE: "In this country, we shouldn't be writing people off, denying them a second chance at a life of meaning," Bush said. He didn't bring up support for mandatory minimum sentences known in Florida as 10-20-Life.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders brought his message about fighting income inequality to the National Urban League conference in Fort Lauderdale today.

Here are some highlights:

RECORD HIGH INCOME INEQUALITY: “The United States of America today is the wealthiest country in the history of the world but most people don’t know that because much of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. Today in America we have more wealth and income inequality than any other major country on earth and it is worse today than at any other time since 1928.”

THE 1 PERCENTERS: “To me it is not acceptable that top 1/10th of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%.”

WALMART OWNERS: “It’s not acceptable that one family, the family that owns Walmart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people.”

KOCH BROTHERS: “You tell me what it means when one family, the Koch brothers family, will spend more money on this election cycle than either the Democratic party or the Republican party. spend almost a billion dollars to make the rich richer and everyone else poorer.”

AFRICAN-AMERICAN UNEMPLOYMENT: “If you are a white kid between 17-20 who graduates high school you have a 33% unemployment rate. If you are a Hispanic kid you have a 36% unemployment rate. If you are an African-American kid, age 17-20, a high school graduate you have a 51% unemployment rate. That is unacceptable.” (See PolitiFact’s analysis of a similar claim by Sanders.)

RACE OF PRISONERS: “Blacks are in prison at six times the rate of whites.”

Democrat Martin O'Malley, the former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor, tried to address criminal-justice reform two weeks ago to the liberal Netroots Nation conference. But he effectively got heckled off stage by "Black lives matter" protesters -- and later had to apologize for responding to them that "All lives matter." Needless to say, he was unable to make his points that day.

So he made them Friday to the National Urban League's annual conference in Fort Lauderdale, where he was allowed to get through his speech and was met with applause, though it was not particularly warm. And he made sure the group knew he had learned his lesson:

As mayor, he said, "Every year we buried 300 young black men who died violent deaths on our streets -- and black lives matter." There was tepid clapping.

WHEN YOUR POLLING IS LOW: O'Malley began his remarks by introducing himself to many people who probably don't know who he is: "I am a Democrat, and I'm running for president of the United States."

REMEMBER 'THE WIRE'? Baltimore was suffering when he took office, O'Malley said, without spelling out that his city's portrayal in the HBO show The Wire: "They had life in their neighborhood made miserable by open-air drug dealing."

BUT HE MADE THINGS BETTER, HE SAID: O'Malley said Baltimore is growing and his administration spent more on public schools. And as governor, he added, he reduced crime, recidivism and incarceration rates. The questions for the next president, O'Malley said, will be: "How can we save lives? How can we improve and reform our criminal-justice system? And how, together, can we make real the promise of equal protection under the law?"

HIS ANSWERS: Reduce mandatory-minimum sentences for non-violent crimes. Repeal the death penalty. Invest in re-entry programs for convicts. Better equip communities to deal with mental illnesses. And, he added, "We must improve policing, and the way we police the police." ("When I first ran for mayor of Baltimore in 1999, I was not endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police," he bragged.)

Hillary Clinton attacked Jeb Bush's stances on health care and Medicare during her speech to the National Urban League.

Clinton didn’t name Bush but she made a series of attacks based on the Right to Rise PAC which is supporting his campaign.

“Race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind,” Clinton told the mostly black audience at the event in Fort Lauderdale.

Here are some highlights of her speech:

JEB BUSH’S RIGHT TO RISE: “I don’t think you can credibly say that everyone has a ‘right to rise’ and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare or for repealing Obamacare. People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care. They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education. And you cannot seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote.”

DISCRIMINATION IN MORTGAGES: Clinton said Americans would be surprised to learn that “African-Americans are nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage or how in 2013 median wealth for white families was more than $134,000 but for African-American familes it was just $11,000.”

SCHOOL SEGREGATION, PRISONS AND VOTING RIGHTS: “A lot of people don’t realize that our schools are more segregated than in 1968 or even African-Americans are sentenced to longer prison terms than white people for the same crimes. Or political operatives are trying every trick in the book to prevent African-Americans from voting.” (PolitiFact recently rated a similar statement she made about school segregation Mostly True.)

CHILDREN’S HEALTH CARE: “African-American children are 500% more likely to die from asthma than white kids.”

RACIAL PROFILING: “We need to try best we can walk in one another's shoes and imagine what it would be like sit our son down and have the talk or if people followed us around stores or locked their car doors when we walked past.”

Clinton now heads to Florida International University to call for lifting the U.S. Trade embargo with Cuba. See her Truth-O-Meter record from PolitiFact.

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and West Palm Beach resident, kicked off a series of speeches Friday by five 2016 presidential contenders at the National Urban League's annual conference in Fort Lauderdale. The early-morning crowd was tepid at best in its reception of the soft-spoken Carson, a Republican and the only African American to speak to the largely black audience.

A LITTLE BIO: Carson talked about growing up "in the ghetto in Boston," in "dire poverty," as the son of a single mother who was one of 24 children, married at 13 and left her "bigamist" husband. "I remember thinking that I would probably never live beyond 25 years of age," he said.

'NASTY RUMOR': Speaking in the third person, Carson decried people who circulate a "nasty rumor" that he wants to do away with government safety nets that at some points helped his mother and his family. "The people who say that kind of stuff, they have an agenda, and they're trying to undermine and divide people," Carson said, adding that he wants "to provide a ladder to get people out of dependency."

THE ANTI-SOCIALISM CANDIDATE: Carson stressed entrepreneurship and tut-tutted "people who try to demonize" capitalism. He called for a six-month "hiatus" to let corporations bring back assets overseas without having to incur the corporate-tax rate.

LAUGH LINE: "I was a horrible student before my mother made us read books. And we were not happy about that. But back in those days you had to do what your parents told you."

ON RACISM: "There was racism," Carson said about growing up. "There still is. And there always will be, as long as there are people with small brains and evil forces to stimulate them." He recalled a nurse at Johns Hopkins University assuming he was an orderly rather than a doctor. He didn't blame her for her "ignorance," he said. Instead, Carson corrected her nicely -- "They would turn about 18 shades of read" -- and he'd have made a "friend for life."

SAYETH THE NEUROSURGEON: "You just have to understand where people are coming from," he said. "It's not the skin and the hair that makes them who they are. It's the brain that makes them who they are."

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump could do to the 2016 general election exactly what Ross Perot did a generation ago – with a Clinton pulling away from a Bush and a wealthy business mogul drawing a surprisingly large share of the vote.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds Hillary Clinton leading every potential Republican rival one on one. And while her lead has narrowed over several, it expands greatly in a race against Jeb Bush if Trump decides to jump in as a third-party candidate, as he has suggested is possible.

The poll projects a virtual rerun of 1992. That year, husband Bill Clinton won the White House with 43 percent of the popular vote. President George H.W. Bush, Jeb Bush’s father, came in second with 37.5 percent. Perot, running as an independent, got 19 percent.

This time, Hillary Clinton gets 44 percent, Bush gets 29 percent and Trump gets 20 percent, according to the poll.

The results come as the Republicans prepare for their first debate, Thursday in Cleveland, with Trump leading national polls of GOP voters. Should he fall short of winning the Republican nomination, which party insiders expect, Trump has opened the door to a third-party bid.

Trump would badly wound Bush, according to the nationwide McClatchy-Marist survey conducted July 22-28.

He would siphon votes from Republicans and independents, but not from Democrats. He’d get 28 percent of the Republican vote, while Bush would sink to 63 percent support from his own party. Meanwhile, Clinton would hold 86 percent of the Democrats.

Here's an excerpt of Hillary Clinton's speech planned for Friday, where she will call for the U.S. to lift the trade embargo against Cuba:

We have arrived at a decisive moment. The Cuban people have waited long enough for progress to come. Even many Republicans on Capitol Hill are starting to recognize the urgency of moving forward. It’s time for their leaders to either get on board or get out of the way.

The Cuba embargo needs to go, once and for all. We should replace it with a smarter approach that empowers the Cuban private sector, Cuban civil society, and the Cuban-American community to spur progress and keep pressure on the regime.

Today I am calling on Speaker Boehner and Senator McConnell to step up and answer the pleas of the Cuban people. By large majorities, they want a closer relationship with America. They want to buy our goods, read our books, surf our web, and learn from our people. They want to bring their country into the 21st century. That is the road toward democracy and dignity. We should walk it together.

July 30, 2015

A bill to open new areas off Florida’s Gulf Coast to drilling and to accelerate the timetable for doing so passed out of a U.S. Senate committee Thursday, prompting a vow from one of the state’s senators to do whatever measures possible to block it.

The legislation passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, allowing for additional areas of oil and gas exploration off America’s shores. Part of the bill dealt with drilling off Florida’s Gulf Coast – and prompted the rebuke from Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Orlando.

In a one-line letter to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate, Nelson said, “If any measure to repeal the current moratorium on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico comes before the full Senate for a vote, I will use all available procedural options to block it.”

Currently, there’s a no-drilling zone extending 125 miles off most of the state’s Gulf coastline – and as far out as 235 miles at some points, Nelson said. That no-drilling zone is in effect until 2022.